Betts to stick with Crows

In the fallout to the regrettable Adelaide pre-season camp, word continued to percolate of player disenchantment.

The unhappiness of Indigenous players, in particular, over elements of the contentious Collective Minds camp fed the idea that small forward Eddie Betts was among those unhappy with the club and contemplating a move back to Victoria.

Adelaide forward Eddie Betts.Credit:AAP

At least one finals-playing Victorian side was interested in securing the contracted opportunist forward if he was gettable.

On Tuesday a spokesman for his new management company, Adelaide-based W Sports & Media, moved to quash suggestions Betts would this week seek a trade from the Crows.

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“Eddie is committed to honouring the remainder of his contract with the Crows,” the spokesman said in a brief statement.

Betts, 31, is contracted until the end of 2020 after signing a three-year deal early last year.

The Crows moved earlier in the year to apologise to their Indigenous players for culturally insensitive elements of the camp, including the use of a talking stick to hand around the group during the camp.

“That could be one aspect that I would acknowledge could’ve been done better,” Adelaide chairman Rob Chapman said in June.

“The people that were running the camp probably could’ve explored better ways of using some terminology that might’ve had an impact on our Aboriginal Indigenous players … we addressed that some months ago.

“I’m not sure they were upset on the camp, but we acknowledge some of the terminology used by the facilitators … on reflection they would say, could’ve been handled better.

“Today they are in good spirits. We’ve put that component of that camp behind us. There are many good things that have emerged from the camp.”

Betts, along with teammate Sam Jacobs, was reported to have raised issues about the camp with Chapman.

Betts later said on Adelaide radio that the camp was not an issue but for a period he struggled mentally with the rigours of the season as he battled with injury.

“At times when I was going into the footy club it had nothing to do with the camp, it was more so my body.

Michael Gleeson is a senior AFL football writer and Fairfax Media's athletics writer. He also covers tennis, cricket and other sports. He won the AFL Players Association Grant Hattam Trophy for excellence in journalism for the second time in 2014 and was a finalist in the 2014 Quill Awards for best sports feature writer. He was also a finalist in the 2014 Australian Sports Commission awards for his work on ‘Boots for Kids’. He is a winner of the AFL Media Association award for best news reporter and a two-time winner of Cricket Victoria’s cricket writer of the year award. Michael has covered multiple Olympics, Commonwealth Games and world championships and 15 seasons of AFL, He has also written seven books - five sports books and two true crime books.